SHANGHAI, China - Two robot chefs serve patrons of Wishdoing restaurant in Shanghai, the Shanghai Daily reports. The mechanical foodservice workers cook eight popular dishes, including Kung Pao chicken, bean curd with chili sauce, and spicy diced chicken with peanuts and Mapo Tofu.

Human workers program the robots by pressing a button to select which dish should be cooked. The dish name and ingredients list and quantities is displayed on the robot. The robots then cleans a pot, stirs in the ingredients, and cooks the food before placing the finished dish on a serving plate.

The robots resemble kitchen counters with iron pots for cooking. The robots can make a meal, start to finish, in three minutes. Each robot cost $30,350 and Wishdoing has plans to equip its 100 locations with a robot, said Ma, who works with the restaurant??s parent company, Shanghai Qi Ding Food Development Co.

The robots debuted at last year??s Shanghai World Expo. "We believe the cooking robots will become a trend in the future for the fast food industry as they guarantee low-carbon emission, food safety and standard tastes that don't change from one outlet to another," said Ma.

Ma also said that the robot chefs would not replace their human counterparts entirely. "The robot chefs will be one part of the restaurant, but it doesn't mean that we would abandon traditional cooking methods," he said.